Have you ever wondered how much time you spend at work? Do you really spend as much time as you think you do at the gym? Which friend do you visit the most? Chronos for iPhone can answer all these questions.

Chronos is a free app for the iPhone that tracks your movements throughout the day and it records where you went and how long you spent there. For example, it can tell when you arrive at work and when you leave, and from this it can work out how much time you actually spent at your workplace.

If you have a favourite restaurant, it can tell you how much time you spend there. It can detect when you visit the gym and tell you when you arrived, when you left, and how long you spent there. It tracks every movement and every location.

The app runs in the background and tracks your location. At first you might need to tell it where you are, such as at work or at home, but once it knows these locations it can record them automatically.

If the app is opened, a list of the locations visited throughout the day is shown. One or more may be listed as unconfirmed, but Chronos sometimes has to guess. If it is right you can just confirm the place you were at, but if it is wrong you can view a list of places nearby and select the right one. It is very similar to apps, such as Facebook and others, that enable you to check in to places. The app also counts the number of steps taken each day, so you can view physical activity too.

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After a few days of tracking your activities, you can view the history. This shows tiles for places like home, work, your favourite coffee shop or cafe, the gym and so on. It also shows maps detailing the routes travelled and it knows when you walked or went by car. Also is available map showing today’s places you visited as pins, and the routes taken from one to the other. Tap the pins and you can view more information about the places, such as the time spent there.

Tap the Chronos logo at the top and it gives you insights into your life, such as the average time you sleep each day, the total distance travelled by car, the number of times you visited the gym and so on.

There are also goals and several are set up by default, but you can easily add others. The list is limited and it could do with some more, but it is still interesting and useful. The goals included are getting to work or leaving work by a set time of your choosing, going out to social spots a certain number of times, working for a number of hours, spending time with friends, and so on.

The app automatically records the goals met each day and you can view your achievements for this week and browse the previous weeks.

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It is fascinating to track your life and see where your time is being spent, or wasted, but it comes at a cost and the price is battery life. There are low, medium and high accuracy settings for the app and I found it tracked me just fine with the medium setting. However, the drain on the battery is noticeable and I had to charge up the iPhone more often than usual. I have now selected the low accuracy setting and will see how it performs over the next week or two.

Chronos is not the only app of its type and there are a few other activity trackers. It is one of the best looking apps though and it can show both your own photos of the places you visit and Instagram photos other people have taken too. It looks great and works well, but it does reduce battery life slightly.